• New CD: Draw the Strings Tight w/ Kenneth Meyer

    New CD: Draw the Strings Tight w/ Kenneth Meyer

    Kevin Ernste

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    This new disk with guitarist Kenneth Meyer features my piece, Roses Don’t Need Perfume, for solo guitar and live electronics. In addition to the inclusion of my work, I was sound recording engineer for the project, seeking to capture both the resonance and intimacy of the guitar and of these unique pieces.

    Roses Don’t Need Perfume, a work in three movements, takes its title from a quotation by Uruguayan writer/philosopher (…journalist, historian…), Eduardo Galeano. In a recent interview, Galeano reflected on his own work and how, in a world of spin and manipulated language, one recognize truth.

    In the first case, Roses… treats the notion of truth literally as the guitar is almost never “touched”/manipulated by the player, it sounds “as it is”. Nearly every note is a natural harmonic and the entire electronic part (minus the use of spoken text) is derived from the instrument itself. In the opening phrase, the guitarist slowly releases two fretted/stopped B naturals, allowing the natural harmonics directly beneath them (also B naturals) to sound. The whole gesture, therefore, is that of simply lifting the hand to allow the guitar to speak for the remainder of the piece.

    Draw the Strings Tight pulls together a range of new music composed for the acoustic guitar. It features premieres of newly commissioned musical discourses on love, reflections on the nature of memory, the search for truth in the many voices of reality, and meditations on sense and enjoyment. The album title is also an evocative phrase that reflects the challenges facing a composer, performer, instrument, and listener, as they work together to realize something of substance, meaning, beauty, and truth. In addition to the premiere recordings of music by Kevin Ernste, Edie Hill, Jesse Jones, James Piorkowski and Nicolas Scherzinger, this album also features the Drei Tentos of Hans Werner Henze. According to Henze, these ”three sketches” set to the writings of Friederich Holderlin are, ”…the vision of a poet who has clouds of madness around his head, and who stammers in fragments, with beautiful, seemingly dislocated, phrases.” As Kenneth Meyer writes, ”The Drei Tentos are included here as an homage to Julian Bream and the memory of how captivated I was the first time I heard his recording of these pieces. It opened my ears to the intimate language of my beloved instrument and placed a seed in my musical conscious.” Kenneth Meyer, the national first-prize winner at the Music Teacher’s National Association Collegiate Artist Competition, is regarded by the Washington Post as, ”A thinking man’s guitarist – who focuses on the inner structure of a piece…and plays with impressive gravity and power.” The Buffalo News has called him, ”Impeccably articulate with superb technique.”

    Works on This Recording

    1. A Still More Excellent Way by James Piorkowski 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: Contemporary
    Written: United States
    2.Draw the Strings Tight by Edie Hill 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: Contemporary
    Written: 2006; United States
    3. Roses Don’t Need Perfume by Kevin Ernste 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: Contemporary
    Written: United States
    4. Tentos (3) for Guitar by Hans Werner Henze 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: 20th Century
    Written: 1958; Germany
    5. Ricordanza by Jesse Jones 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: Contemporary
    Written: 2012; United States
    6. Offering of the Five Senses by Nicolas Scherzinger 
    Performer:  Kenneth Meyer (Guitar)
    Period: Contemporary
    Written: 2006; United States

  • Palimpsest for String Quartet and Electronics

    Palimpsest for String Quartet and Electronics

    Kevin Ernste

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    Palimpsest was composed for the magnificent JACK Quartet, the result of a Fromm Music Foundation Commission, and is dedicated to Hans Abrahamsen.

    1. Frontispice (onto Ravel on Schoenberg through DeGaetani)
    2. Quodlibet (onto Cage on Satie, Boulez, and Duchamp)
    3. Lachrymae (onto Crumb on Dowland)

    Frontispice, excerpt:

    Quodlibet:

    Lachrymae, excerpt:

     

    “Each act is virgin, even the repeated one”. (Cage quoting René Char).

    A palimpsest is a manuscript whose original text has been scraped or washed away and overwritten with a new one. My Palimpsest for string quartet and electronics is a set of allusive “overwritings,” personal compositional dialogues with other musics and their (sometimes hidden) references and meanings.

    Frontispice (onto Ravel on Schoenberg through DeGaetani) references two later song cycles by Ravel, his Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé (1913) and the Chansons Madécasses (1926), elements of which seem to spring more from Schoenberg’s early atonal (or very late tonal) language than from the composer of Mother Goose. A vestige of Mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani’s voice appears in the electronic part, singing text from the latter cycle’s final song, “Il est doux” (“It is sweet”): (“Singing pleases my soul; and dancing is nearly as sweet as a kiss.”), mingling with recurring quotations of the first drone and very last chord of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

    Quodlibet (onto Cage on Satie, Boulez, and Duchamp) points to the work and philosophy of John Cage, particularly his 1950 Quartet in Four Parts. Like the 1950 Quartet, Quodlibet is constructed of musical “gamuts”: short, highly-detailed sonic/musical moments initial composed without regard to their eventual context. The electronic part uses Cage’s spoken voice, often quoting or paraphrasing others, referring back to Cage’s own ideas about music.

    Lachrymae (onto Crumb on Dowland) echoes George Crumb’s use of John Dowland’s 1596 Pavana Lachrymae (“Flow my Tears”) within his 1970 Black Angels, bringing the Dowland melody and text to the musical surface and resonating it within my own melancholic, Crumb-inspired harmonic and timbral world.

    photo from www.jackquartet.com, by Stephen Poff
    photo from www.jackquartet.com, by Stephen Poff

    About: The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with “explosive virtuosity” (Boston Globe) and “viscerally exciting performances” (New York Times). David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being “among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience,” and NPR listed their performance as one of “The Best New York Alt-Classical Concerts Of 2010.” The Washington Post commented, “The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital.” Alex Ross (New Yorker) hailed their performance of Iannis Xenakis’ complete string quartets as being “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh,” and Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times) called their sold-out performances of Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 3 In iij. Noct. “mind-blowingly good.” The quartet’s recording of Xenakis’ complete string quartets appeared on “Best Of” lists from the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Yorker, NPR, and as “one of 2009’s most impressive recordings” from Time Out New York.

    JACK has performed to critical acclaim at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Netherlands), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, Morgan Library & Museum, and Kimmel Center with recent and upcoming performances at the Ultraschall Festival (Germany), Da Camera Society (Los Angeles), Monday Evening Concerts, Town Hall Seattle, Les Flâneries Musicales de Reims (France), Arcana Festival (Austria), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), and Strathmore Hall

    Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, James Dillon, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Elliott Sharp, Beat Furrer, Caleb Burhans, and Aaron Cassidy. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Alan Hilario, Peter Ablinger, Gregory Spears, Elliott Sharp, Jason Eckardt, and Hannah Lash. The quartet also offers fresh interpretations of early music, including works by Don Carlo Gesualdo, Guillaume de Machaut, and Josquin des Prez.

    JACK has led workshops with young composers at the University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), New York University, Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Eastman School of Music, University at Buffalo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, University of Huddersfield (United Kingdom), University of Washington, University of Victoria (Canada), and Manhattan School of Music. In addition to working with composers and performers, JACK seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience

  • Nisi for horn and live electronics

    Nisi for horn and live electronics

    Kevin Ernste

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    Nisi [“nee-see”] (“Island”)  was premiered in 2012 by hornist Adam Unsworth (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). The work is released on Equilibrium Records (Albany Music Distribution) along with my Kajato for horn and electronics.

    LISTEN:

    Iannis Xenakis: “…I think that the music that I write is not important for most of the people. It is like an island. …maybe after my death [people] will be more interested in what I have done during my life. But that is not a problem because I cannot do anything else. I am writing music…”

    Nisi was composed for hornist Adam Unsworth, motivated by his highly personal approach to the horn. It is dedicated to composer Iannis Xenakis to commemorate his 90th birthday (May 29th, 2012), inspired by Xenakis’s singular spirit, his totally unique sonic palette, and the uncompromisingness of his ideas. Xenakis truly was and is a musical island unto himself. It’s materials are drawn from several of Xenakis’s works, notably Eonta (1963-64), Anaktoria (1969), and N’Shima (1975)

    All of the electronic sounds of for Nisi are drawn from horns, in most cases from Unsworth’s own instrument(s)–recorded together at Cornell University in 2011 and 2012–with the exception of several “vocal” sounds derived from the sung text, “in vanum laboraverunt” (“labor in vain”) from Claudio Monteverdi’s Nisi Dominus (from Venetian Vespers, 1610) that appear in the last coda.

    More About Adam: Adam Unsworth is Associate Professor of Horn at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Prior to his joining the faculty at Michigan, he spent nine years as a member of the horn section of The Philadelphia Orchestra and three years in the Detroit Symphony. Adam has appeared as a recitalist and clinician at many universities throughout the United States, and has performed repeated solo and chamber concerts at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. He is the leader of his own jazz group, the Adam Unsworth Ensemble, which recorded the critically acclaimed CD, Excerpt This! and now has completed a second recording, entitled Next Step. The group is embarked on its first U.S. tour in October 2007. Next Step, the Adam Unsworth Ensemble’s 2008 release, is a culmination of work done after his leaving the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2007, a move made in order to devote more time and energy to teaching and creative endeavors. It features new Unsworth compositions for jazz quintet of horn, woodwinds, vibraphone, bass, and drums, and two original works by multi-woodwind virtuoso Les Thimmig.

    In 2006 Unsworth released Excerpt This!, a groundbreaking recording for the French horn that looks to redefine the virtuosic boundaries of the instrument. Highlighted on the CD are five of Unsworth’s compositions for jazz sextet. The instrumentation of horn, violin, alto flute, bass clarinet, vibraphone, bass, and drums is unique and creates a texture that truly embodies the term chamber jazz. Joining Unsworth on Excerpt This! are Philadelphia jazz greats Tony Miceli, Diane Monroe, Ranaan Meyer, and Cornell Rochester, as well as Les Thimmig from Madison, WI. In addition to the works for sextet, the CD includes unaccompanied jazz works for horn by Unsworth, Les Thimmig and Dana Wilson.

    A PDF score and other performance directions can be obtained here. Software for the live performance Nisi can also be downloaded here.

  • Fromm Music Foundation Commission, 2011

    Fromm Music Foundation Commission, 2011

    Kevin Ernste

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    I am pleased and honored to have received a Fromm Music Foundation Commission for 2011. The $10,000 Commission will be for my new piece for the JACK Quartet — string quartet and electronics. – KE

    The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, founded by the late Paul Fromm in the fifties, has been located at Harvard University since 1972. Over the course of its existence, the Fromm Foundation has commissioned over 300 new compositions and their performances, and has sponsored hundreds of new music concerts and concert series, among them Tanglewood’s Festival of Contemporary Music and the Fromm Concert Series at Harvard University. In 1992-1993, the Paul Fromm Composer-in-Residence program at the American Academy in Rome was founded, and the annual Fromm concert and Paul Fromm Award for Composition at Tanglewood were established.

    More information about the Fromm and the official Press Release is below and can be found online here.

    FROMM MUSIC FOUNDATION AT HARVARD ANNOUNCES 2011 COMMISSIONS

    The Board of Directors of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University is pleased to announce the names of twelve composers selected to receive 2011 Fromm commissions. These commissions represent one of the principal ways that the Fromm Music Foundation seeks to strengthen composition and to bring contemporary concert music closer to the public. In addition to the commissioning fee, a subsidy is available for the ensemble performing the premiere of the commissioned work.

    The composers who received commissions are: Marcos Balter, Chicago, IL; Armando Bayolo, Alexandria, VA; Richard Carrick, New York, NY; David Claman, Queens, NY; Kevin Ernste, Ithaca, NY; Ruby Fulton, Baltimore, MD; Lee Hyla, Chicago, IL; Amy Beth Kirsten, New Haven, CT; Felipe Lara, Jersey City, NJ; Jeremy Podgursky, Bloomington, IN; Neil Rolnick, New York, NY; and Laurie San Martin, Woodland, CA.

    Founded by the patron of contemporary music, the late Paul Fromm, the Fromm Foundation is now in its fifty-sixth year, having been located at Harvard University for the past several decades. Since the 1950s, it has commissioned well over 300 new compositions and their performances, and has sponsored hundreds of new music concerts and concert series. “I want to know you,” Igor Stravinsky once said to Fromm, “because contemporary music has many friends but only a few lovers.”

    Among a number of other projects, the Fromm Music Foundation sponsors the annual Fromm Contemporary Music Series at Harvard.

    Applications for commissions are reviewed on an annual basis. The annual deadline for proposals is June 1. Requests for guidelines should be sent to The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard, Department of Music, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.

  • Anacrusis for organ/organists, wood workers, and electronic sounds

    Anacrusis for organ/organists, wood workers, and electronic sounds

    Kevin Ernste

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    Anacrusis is a piece about suspension and anticipation, both hope and dread.  The work is dedicated to Dwight “Gus” Hemion, a man who found solace in working with his hands but who died of lung cancer on November 10th, 2010.

    The piece was commission by organist Annette Richards for the inauguration of the new baroque organ in Anabel Taylor Hall at Cornell University. The designers, researchers, woodworkers, and volunteers for the organ construction were also part of the performance, producing, at specified times, sounds of air, metal, and wood.

    (It is said that when J. S. Bach befriended a new organ, he would ‘test the lungs’ by pulling out the stop for a group of pipes and dropping his arm on the manual to hear the overall character of the pipes in question.)

    Play an excerpt from Anacrusis:

    An article on Anacrusis by Linda Glaser:

    The new instrument with woodworker Christopher Lowe (on ladder) and lead designer Munetaka Yokota (inset)

    Award-winning electronic music composer Kevin Ernste, professor of music and director of the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center, will open the organ dedication’s keynote concert on Saturday, March 12 at 5:30 p.m. with a special inaugural composition. “It’s an exciting opportunity to showcase the organ as a vehicle for new music,” says Annette Richards, professor of music and conference organizer.

    The piece is titled Anacrusis, invoking the anticipation and the suspension of time that happened in the construction of this organ, says Ernste, as well as the name of Anabel Taylor Chapel, the organ’s home.

    Ernste opens the piece with the hissing of a misaligned organ pipe and the sounds of woodwork and construction, performed by representatives of the organ project, including case maker Chris Lowe, organ designer Munetaka Yokota, volunteers Maureen Chapman and Jeff Snedeker, undergraduate students and others.

    Then comes a blast of all the organ pipes at once. The ensuing resonant silence creates an awareness of the physical space, says Ernste, while sounds of hammers and hand planes invoke the organ’s creation.

    Organist Annette Richards at the manuals of the new Baroque organ

    This opening sound cluster recurs but eventually gives way to a borrowed melody from the beginning of J.S. Bach’s Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582, itself filled with suspensions and anacrusi. Ernste transforms the Bach into an elongated series of suspensions using special software he wrote especially for this piece.

    Late in the composition Ernste brings in recordings of other Cornell organs. “I had this idea that even the other organs on campus would have some sense of anticipation, almost like welcoming a new sibling,” he says. “Their collective character turns into a kind of haze,  but they’re also each in slightly different tuning systems, so that blast of sonic richness that begins the piece becomes, at the end, an amalgamation of all of these voices coming together.”

    A score for Anacrusis is available here.  It is licensed under a “Creative Commons” license, see below.

    Creative Commons License
    Anacrusis for organ/organists, wood workers, and electronic sounds
    Kevin Ernste is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

  • Numina for flute, viola, harp, and live electronics

    Numina for flute, viola, harp, and live electronics

    Kevin Ernste

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    The word numina (plural of “numen”) is a Latin term meaning “noddings”, referring in the old Roman religion to the physical gesture of a divine decree, the will of the gods passed down. As successive Roman leaders took on the status of gods on earth, the term became personified in them, more generally translatable as “presence” or “authority”.

    Numina was composed for the Janus Trio in 2010 as an allegory for the authoritative abuses of Rome’s current divine authority, the Vatican. It is a public and total renouncement of an abusive institution, one catastrophically self-undermined by it’s inability to function the face of the simplest of all moral “dilemmas”: the protection of children from sexual abuse.

    The physical movement of the performers over the course of the piece—from a forward-facing position, to facing inward toward the harp, to finally facing away from the audience—echoes the practice in the Roman Catholic mass of the priest turning his back to the congregation.

    The Latin text is from the beginning of the Latin Mass, of baptisms, and of exorcisms. “Abrenuntia?” (Ah-bray-noon-tsee-ah) is a question asked of the congregation, meaning “Do you renounce?”. The response is “Abrenuncio!” (Ab-bray-noon-see-oh), “I renounce!”.  These questions are part of a formal litany: “Abrenuntia Satanae?”, “Do you renounce Satan?”, and so on. In Numina the renouncement is generalized and total.

    Numina notes, further details from the preface to the musical score.

    A preview of the upcoming studio recording:

    Numina-preview

    A video excerpt from the premiere: 

    Click here to watch a video excerpt

    And, a recent performance at the 2010 Spark Festival of Electronic Music in Minneapolis, MN can be viewed here:

    Numina for the Janus Trio

    The physical movement of the performers over the course of the piece—from a forward-facing position, to facing inward toward the harp, to finally facing away from the audience—echoes the practice in the Roman Catholic mass of the priest turning his back to the congregation.

    The Latin text is from the beginning of the Latin Mass, of baptisms, and of exorcisms. “Abrenuntia?” (Ah-bray-noon-tsee-ah) is a question asked of the congregation, meaning “Do you renounce?”. The response is “Abrenuncio!” (Ab-bray-noon-see-oh), “I renounce!”.  These questions are part of a formal litany: “Abrenuntia Satanae?”, “Do you renounce Satan?”, and so on. In Numina the renouncement is generalized and total.

    Numina notes, further details from the preface to the musical score.

    A score for Numina is also available.  It is licensed under a “Creative Commons” license, see below.

    Numina Score, PDF

    Creative Commons License
    Numina for flute, viola, and harp by Kevin Ernste is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

  • Numina recording session at The Gallery

    Numina recording session at The Gallery

    Kevin Ernste

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    The Janus Trio recorded Numina in May at  The Gallery in Brooklyn, NY.as part of a larger recording and release project.  Mixing and mastering is underway, a rough preview of the session can he here here:

    Numina-preview

  • Roses Don’t Need Perfume for solo guitar and electronics

    Roses Don’t Need Perfume for solo guitar and electronics

    Kevin Ernste

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    Roses Don’t Need Perfume takes its title from a quotation by Uruguayan writer/philosopher (…journalist, historian…), Eduardo Galeano.  In a recent interview, Galeano reflected on his own work and how, in a world of spin and manipulated language, one recognize truth.

    In the first case, Roses… treats the notion of truth literally as the guitar is almost never “touched”/manipulated by the player, it sounds “as it is”.  Nearly every note is a natural harmonic and the entire electronic part (minus the use of spoken text) is derived from the instrument itself.  In the opening phrase, the guitarist slowly releases two fretted/stopped B naturals, allowing the natural harmonics directly beneath them (also B naturals) to sound.  The whole gesture, therefore, is that of simply lifting the hand to allow the guitar to speak for the remainder of the piece.

    The three movements are continuous (attacca).

    I. O Viole Elastique (The Toy Guitar): This movement is a setting of a photograph of the same title by an anonymous photographer.  In it a boy climbs a hill with a large bowl of laundry on top of his head.  A toy guitar strung over his shoulder waits to be played.  Tht title contains a word play that makes my direct translation deceptive: it refers to the instrument (a guitar/viol with elastic or plastic strings) as well as the idea of the fabric/clothing and of “violation”.

    II. La Casa de las Flores (The House of Flowers): The title comes from Pablo Neruda’s poem Explico algunas cosas (“I explain a few things”), particularly its opening reference to his childhood home, destroyed during the Spanish Civil War : “My house was named /the house of the flowers, because everywhere /geraniums exploded: it was /a beautiful house / with dogs and little children. /Remember, Raul?/Eh, Rafel? /Federico, do you remember..”  This text, spoken by Neruda himself, appears within in the electronic part.  The final name he calls to, “Federico” is Federico García Lorca and the music here refers through Lorca to George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children.

    III. Compana de palo (Wooden Bells): Galeano uses the phrase “compana de palo” to describe the voiceless people, those whose village tower contains only a “wooden bell”, a silouette cut to appear real but unable to make any sound.  There is a secondary reference to the Argentine anarchist cultural magazine of the same title “Le Compana de Palo”, published in 1925-27, that included lively debates on art, literature, music, and social anarchy in South America.

    Watch performed in Timisoara, Romainia:

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    A program note for Roses Don’t Need Perfume can be found below.

    Guitarist Kenneth Meyer in Barnes Hall at Cornell University, recording “Roses…” in 2010

    A score is also is available for download here.  It is licensed under a “Creative Commons” license, see below. An electronic patch (PureData) for performance can be obtained by contacting the composer.

    Creative Commons License
    Roses Don’t Need Perfume for guitar and electronic sounds by Kevin Ernste is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

  • New work for global hyperorgan at Orgelpark, Amsterdam

    New work for global hyperorgan at Orgelpark, Amsterdam

    Kevin Ernste

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    New piece for “global hyperorgan”, commissioned by organist Randall Harlow to be presented in June of 2025 at Orgelpark, Amsterdam, an international concert stage in Amsterdam
    for organists, composers and other artists.

    The work will include simultaneous performances in Amsterdam, Las Angeles, and Melbourne.

    The Orgelpark is housed in the beautifully restored monumental Parkkerk in the Gerard Brandtstraat, near the Amsterdam Vondelpark, and aims to integrate the organ into mainstream musical culture through a new presentation. Moving away from the traditional function of the organ serving the building (the church), in the Orgelpark the building serves the organ and its music.

    The organ is the focal point of the very diverse program of Orgelpark activities. Every season about 80 activities take place, such as concerts for diverse groups of enthusiasts. Think, for example, of classical music, jazz, and improvisation. The Orgelpark also hosts concerts in combination with other forms of performing arts, like dance and film, and organizes master classes and symposia. Once in a while the Orgelpark turns into a workshop for young talent from conservatories in the Netherlands and abroad. The Orgelpark also commissions new compositions. In short, the Orgelpark is buzzing! – from Orgelpark

  • CAGE | Bertoia record release

    CAGE | Bertoia record release

    Kevin Ernste

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    Weighter Recordings release of CAGE | Bertoia, recorded at The Johnson Museum of Art by Kevin Ernste

    CAGE began as a loose collective of musicians surrounding Cornell University in 2009, including faculty, students, and community members interested in improvisation and experimentation with sound. Feeney and other founding members Kevin Ernste, Chris Miller, and Annie Lewandowski have collaborated with improvisers and experimental musicians from around the world, including Peni Candrarini, Ellen Fullman, Jessika Kenney, Eyvind Kang, and Theresa Wong.

    All tracks improvised by CAGE (Kevin Ernste, Tim Feeney, Annie Lewandowski, and Christopher J. Miller) on sculptures by Harry Bertoia in the collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University. Recorded in the Museum in August 2015 by Kevin Ernste. Mixed and mastered by Kevin Ernste and Tim Feeney.

  • Music in the American Wild: Interregnum

    Music in the American Wild: Interregnum

    Kevin Ernste

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    New audio and video album release!

    The Music in the American Wild audio and video albums, including my piece Interregnum for chamber ensemble and bowls of water are now available on iTunes/Apple Music (audio and video), Amazon, or through ArtistSharer, including beautiful video footage of the 2016 tour through thea National Parks, documented by Jorge Arzac, accompanying first disc of the double album. These films give a strong context for the music, sharing the inspirational places that brought our project to life.

  • Interregnum for chamber ensemble, bells, and bowls of water

    Kevin Ernste

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    Interregnum was commissioned by Music in the American Wild as part of the US National Park Service’s Centennial. It’s initial performances were in situ: inside the caves, on the meadows, and atop the mountain peaks that make up our great national treasures.

    It’s two intersecting musics–one using traditional instruments, the other with bowls of water–represent man and Nature respectively. Nature’s music is timeless, and like the parks, exceeds and ignores our human scales and our delusions of order and control. The nested chamber piece entertains this “dominion” narrative, layering references to the music of Chopin, Beethoven, Ives, and even Paul Simon, in a vain attempt to glorify our temporary reign.

     

    Interregnum is a provocation of humility, of these 100 years of Park preservation set in relief against their geologic timescales. Man’s entire existence can be roughly represented by the time needed to form one stalagmite, our written culture by the life of a single tree. We are, in turns out, mere keepers at the watch and, if we can manage to acknowledge it, stewards of our own survival. These Parks were here long before us and they will be here when we are gone.

  • Adwords™/Edward for ensemble with Google Glass

    Adwords™/Edward for ensemble with Google Glass

    Kevin Ernste

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    Recently commissioned for Google Glass as part of Google’s “Glass Explorer” program–the first piece of its kind,”AdWords™/Edward” is dedicated to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    In it, performers *wink* to advance through a series of short, looped phrases (see examples below, click to open) displayed in their glasses…a stylistic homage to Terry Riley’s In C, now celebrating its 50th Anniversary year.

    TEXT:
    AdWords™
    Ed’s words
    Ed-ward

    Ed’s words know

    Edward knows them
    Edward pwned (owned) them
    Edward snowed them

    Edward Snowden

    Performers: Cynthia Johnston Turner (conductor/electronics), Tyler L. Ehrlich, Andre Hafner (prepared piano), myself (drums and voice). IMAGE (below): John Roark

  • AdWords™/Edward at the Georgia Museum of Art

    AdWords™/Edward at the Georgia Museum of Art

    Kevin Ernste

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    AdWords™/Edward for ensemble with Google Glass, a commission of the Google Explorers project via Cynthia Johnston Turner, will be performed at the Georgia Museum of Art as part of the 2014 Spotlight on the Arts.

    AdWords™/Edward, is dedicated to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

    In it, performers *wink* to advance through a series of short, looped phrases displayed in their glasses…a performative (and stylistic) homage to Terry Riley’s “In C”, now celebrating its 50th Anniversary year.

    TEXT:
    AdWords™
    Ed’s words
    Ed-ward

    Ed’s words know

    Edward knows them
    Edward pwned (owned) them
    Edward snowed them

    Edward Snowden

  • Palimpsest at Sweet Thunder 2014

    Palimpsest at Sweet Thunder 2014

    Kevin Ernste

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    My piece Palimpsest for the JACK Quartet will be performed at this year’s Sweet Thunder Festival (hosts Rand Steiger and Steven Schick), April 24-27, 2014. The SF Chronicle calls the new festival ““An enticing-looking four-day extravaganza of modern and new music, ranging from established masters to up-and-coming composers.”. The 2014 festival includes JACK, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and composers Morton Subotnick, Ken Ueno, Rand Steiger, Roger Reynolds,  and Pamela Z, among others.

    Works on the JACK performance included Turgut Ercetin’s String Quartet No. 1; my Palimpsest, the West Coast premiere of Natacha Diels’ Nightmare for JACK, and in a tribute to the late Jonathan Harvey, a performance of his String Quartet No. 4.

  • Palimpsest: JACK Quartet, for string quartet and electronics

    Palimpsest: JACK Quartet, for string quartet and electronics

    Kevin Ernste

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    photo from www.jackquartet.com, by Stephen Poff
    More details and audio here –>

    About: The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with “explosive virtuosity” (Boston Globe) and “viscerally exciting performances” (New York Times). David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being “among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience,” and NPR listed their performance as one of “The Best New York Alt-Classical Concerts Of 2010.” The Washington Post commented, “The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital.” Alex Ross (New Yorker) hailed their performance of Iannis Xenakis’ complete string quartets as being “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh,” and Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times) called their sold-out performances of Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 3 In iij. Noct. “mind-blowingly good.” The quartet’s recording of Xenakis’ complete string quartets appeared on “Best Of” lists from the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, New Yorker, NPR, and as “one of 2009’s most impressive recordings” from Time Out New York.

    JACK has performed to critical acclaim at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (Netherlands), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, Morgan Library & Museum, and Kimmel Center with recent and upcoming performances at the Ultraschall Festival (Germany), Da Camera Society (Los Angeles), Monday Evening Concerts, Town Hall Seattle, Les Flâneries Musicales de Reims (France), Arcana Festival (Austria), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), and Strathmore Hall

    Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, György Kurtág, Matthias Pintscher, Georg Friedrich Haas, James Dillon, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, Elliott Sharp, Beat Furrer, Caleb Burhans, and Aaron Cassidy. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Alan Hilario, Peter Ablinger, Gregory Spears, Elliott Sharp, Jason Eckardt, and Hannah Lash. The quartet also offers fresh interpretations of early music, including works by Don Carlo Gesualdo, Guillaume de Machaut, and Josquin des Prez.

    JACK has led workshops with young composers at the University of Iowa, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), New York University, Columbia University, Carnegie Mellon University, Eastman School of Music, University at Buffalo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, University of Huddersfield (United Kingdom), University of Washington, University of Victoria (Canada), and Manhattan School of Music. In addition to working with composers and performers, JACK seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience